As the number of users viewing information and purchasing items electronically increases, there is increasing competition for customers in not only traditional shopping channels, such as physical “brick and mortar” stores and catalog-based shopping, but in ever-expanding electronic environments as well. Additional challenges exist for retailers or providers in these electronic environments, however, as many traditional advertising and promotional approaches do not work as effectively as in physical locations such as retail stores. For example, when an item that is expected to be popular is first placed on sale, many retailers will offer the item at a reduced or promotional price that will attract customers to purchase that item from that particular retailer. In many cases the price will be a “loss leader,” or a promotion for which the retailer may actually lose money on the sale of the item. Part of the reason for selling the item at a loss, or at least for little or no profit, is that once a customer takes the time, effort, and expense to travel to a physical store, the customer will likely pick up one or more items while the customer is at the store. Thus, the retailer is likely to make a profit on the average transaction including that item. Or, at least, some of those customers will become regular customers and will be more likely to make subsequent profitable purchases at that location.
Promotions such as “loss leaders” do not generally work the same way in an electronic environment. An electronic retailer often will have to substantially match the prices offered by physical retail stores in order to entice customers to purchase from the retailer (with some allowance possible for savings related to travel, convenience, etc.). Because there is no real cost for the customer to visit an electronic marketplace, however, customers often visit a site just to purchase a specific loss-leader item without bundling additional items into the order. Often, a customer will just visit a site to check out a price or view information for a specific item. In each of these cases, the electronic retailer will either lose money on the transaction, or at least have to accept the cost of resources to provide information to customers who do not actually end up purchasing or otherwise consuming the item, service, subscription, etc.